08 Aug 2020 Speech at the Commissioning of ALGON Comprehensive Health Centre, Eyin Grammar, Ibadan

[Protocol]

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Primary Healthcare addresses the majority of the healthcare needs of people throughout their lifetime. This means that a person may live and die without ever needing the services of an obstetrician, dermatologist or plastic surgeon. But hardly will you gather a sample of the population and not find people with illnesses such as malaria fever, diabetes, asthma, back pain or hypertension. This is why primary healthcare must be made affordable, and the facilities put close enough to the people so that they do not have to travel far to access healthcare.

And so, before we came into office, we were determined to ensure a turnaround in our healthcare sector. In order to achieve this, we made Healthcare one of the four pillars of our manifesto, the Roadmap to Accelerated Development in Oyo State 2019-2023. And since we took over the affairs of the state, we have made healthcare development one of our priorities through policies and actions.

For example, here in Oyo State, we have 721 Primary Healthcare Centres, or PHCs for short, across the 351 political wards. Although this number is not enough, our top goal is to make what we have functional and affordable.

So, in revitalizing the PHC service system, we are starting with the strengthening of a minimum of one PHC per ward. Therefore, we are focusing on renovating and equipping 351 PHCs in the state, for a start. We started with the PHC in Oranyan and used that as a standard for the subsequent renovations.

Also, through the Oyo State Health Insurance Agency, we have been able to register 58,000 more beneficiaries for health insurance in the past year. And today, we are kicking off a new phase of enrollment. We will be mobilising the community into Oyo State Health Insurance Scheme. As our Cost-Benefit Analysis has shown, the average out-of-pocket payment for healthcare is N50,000/annum per resident of Oyo State. With healthcare insurance, you pay N8,000, a reduction of 84%. So, I urge you enrol in this scheme as the officers go from house to house in mobilisation.

Speaking to other gains in healthcare, we have leveraged on our COVID-19 response by identifying some PHCs that can be used as isolation centres and embarked on rehabilitation and repairs. For example, the PHCs in Igbo Ora and Awe.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a suspension of activities, we had approved and started a N54 million-naira medical mission aimed at bringing healthcare closer to the people.

On this note, I am delighted to commission ALGON Comprehensive Health Center, Eyin Grammar, Ibadan and kick off the community-based health insurance scheme. Rest assured that the equipment you see here today are not for photo ops. They are here to stay and to serve the needs of the good people of Eyin Grammar and its environs.

Let me assure you that we will continue to invest in the primary healthcare system in Oyo State. Already, we have developed a new funding structure for PHCs in our state. We followed the policy of paying counterpart funding wherever it is required. Oyo State paid a sum of N250M as state counterpart fund for the Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRIN) World Bank project. The project commenced in March 2020. We paid a sum of N100M as state counterpart fund on the Basic Health Care Fund project. We also paid N19 million counterpart fund for the Integrated Medical Outreach Program by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA). As I said in my One Year in Office Broadcast, we will start seeing the results of our new funding structure in the months to come.

I hereby declare this Health Centre open.